“Happy Labor Day, folks!” is hardly the kind of sentiment we would have predicted ourselves using for a Fecking Bahamas article, but we recently cracked open some history books, and our feelings surrounding the holiday have grown far more complicated.
Over the past few months we’ve been studying the the Harlan County War, a ten year skirmish on American soil that last damn near the entire Great Depression from 1931 to 1939. So why were we filling our heads with thoughts of union busting, the Battle of Evarts, J.H. Blair, and Pete Seeger’s popularization of one of folk music’s most enduring anthems?
Because all too often, the past predicts the future. All of the above is extremely relevant to the turmoil of today, and frankly each of the subjects are things we’d know little to nothing about if it weren’t for a message from Haunt Luma of At Home With Monsters asking if we’d like to collaborate on something special.
Today, it’s our genuine honor to present a modern iteration of “Which Side Are You On?”
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Truth be told, this song is one of many we’ve collaborated with Haunt on and hopefully you’ll hear the rest soon – for now, here’s our shot at a press release:
In 1931, thugs hired by Sheriff J.H. Blair and a number of Harlan County coal companies forcefully entered the home of Florence Reece in search of her husband Sam. Sam was a known union organizer, therefore deemed a threat to those in power. Their intent was to capture, intimidate, and altogether stop him from further rallying members of the working class but their sole accomplishment that night was inspiring a folk anthem that would echo uncomfortably in the ears of bootlickers for decades to come.
When the last of the thugs had left the house, the story goes that Florence scrawled a question across the family’s calendar that still makes people uncomfortable today: “Which Side Are You On?” Though simple, the question’s power was undeniable, and when she set it to the tune of existing Appalachian tune “Lay the Lily Low,” it took off like a social wildfire. Miners and activists would perform “Which Side Are You On” to raise money for their families and striking coworkers, and at the end of the Harlan County War even Pete Seeger covered the tune, exposing the entire nation to potent, poised protest.
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Nearly a century later, it seems we need to ask the same question… but louder. In 2026, the ever encroaching hum of surveillance and death groans of capitalism do their best to drown out the cries of those they affect. But we are all Harlan County now. Government and corporations make deals behind closed doors and armed thugs are at your neighbors doors. So ask yourself, ask your family, ask your friends the all important question: “Which Side Are You On?”
With this new rendition, Huant Luma (At Home With Monsters) and Michael Whiteside (TRELLYS) seek to amplify the folk classic in new ways, but also honor it’s legacy.
“This is a song that has been ringing in my head for years since I was a kid and saw a historical singers group perform it dressed in antique 19th or 20th century clothing for a 4th of July event. As a personal Mandela effect, I carried the melody thinking it had to do with the Civil War, but upon finally looking it up learned it was a song affiliated with labor unions in their own civil wars with ruthless business owners, lapdogs within the local police, Pinkertons, and so on.
Earlier this year, The Internet Archive put on a contest for modern derivations of public domain works, and this idea sort of planted in my mind of the folk song I watched these women sing when I was a child, realizing this would be the perfect song to revisit through my lived perspective and style being a worker in a city that continues to transform in succeeding industrial revolutions.To capture this song’s spirit and intent, I was heavily influenced by a long time love He is Legend, Norma Jean, and Every Time I Die (RIP Andy Williams). However, the song was then taken in a direction I never would have been able to achieve without the passionate collaboration of TRELLYS in writing this arrangement, as well as Dan Bieranowski’s (Pressure Cracks, Guilt Tradition) fantastic production turning lead into gold.
This song is dedicated to the labor movements in the United States and across the world. We live in another time analogous to the great Seattle strike of 1919 wherein the people came into their own power in the city. Living in the shadow of the strike and the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone 100 years later, I hope to contribute someday to the next chapter of a people’s proud history.” – Haunt Luma
“And that is why we say that we are starting on a road that leads – NO ONE KNOWS WHERE!” -Anna Louise Strong, 1919
(Thanks for reading! Be sure to check out more from Haunt on the At Home With Monsters Bandcamp here or on the Corus app here.)